How to Replace Mirror Switch 2013-18 Subaru Forester

Hey friends, it's Len here at 1A Auto. Today I'm working on a 2014 Subaru Forester. I'm going to be showing you how to take out the little mirror switch here. It's going to be a very easy job. I want to be the guy that shows you how to do it. If you need any parts or instructional videos you can always check us 1aauto.com. Thanks.

All right, so here we go. We've got our door open. We're looking at our door panel. We're going to use a small pocket screwdriver or whatever you happen to have, something small. Right here there's a little flappy door, I'm just going to grab this. Pop it open behind there. There's a Phillips head screw located right there, we're going to remove that. Phillips head screwdriver, turning it counterclockwise of course. Grab our little screw out of there, that's what it looks like. You can use something like these, these are called trim tools. They're plastic so you won't mar up any of your plastic door panel here.

Feel along the bottom, just make sure you don't feel any screws or anything like that that go in and hold it to the door itself. It feels pretty good. I'm just going to start along the bottom. I'm going to use my door panel tools here. See if I can find where the little clips are. I feel like there's one right about there. There we go. Feels like it's getting tighter up here. Move over to this side and do the same thing. Feels pretty good. Just try shaking it around a little bit. Feels like gets it tight up here.

All right. While we're moving it around, I feel like it's getting ready to come loose here. Try wiggling it. It feels as though there's something holding it in and right here so I'm just going to grab something. I'm going to try to pop this off real quick. I've got my pocket screwdriver again right here. There's a little slot, I'll show you it, one second here. I'll try to get that off. Right here is where I went, right in between there and here. It just pulls out, these little tabs.

Now we're going to find two more Phillips heads, one right there, one located down here. You can pick which one you want to remove first. You do you, boo boo. That one looks just like the first one. We'll grab this one. Number three, just like the other two. Cool beans. I'm going to grab our door panel, wiggle it around. It comes right off now. Behind here there's going to be some wiring and some cables so you just want to make sure you take a look and see what's going on before you go ahead and hang it.

All right. We're going to disconnect all we can. I'm going to take this white one right here, I'm going to try to remember the white goes up top. You can mark it if you need to or whatever you need to do to remember, or just watch the video to see how it was removed and just reinstall it that way. Anyway, white one, pull it. I'm going to take a peek, it's just a little ball. Easy peasy. I'm to go over to the green, I'm just going to pull it out, lift it.

Let's keep on rolling. Down here there should be a little push clip right in the center. There's the push right there, that's where I pushed on. There's one right here, I'm going to try to push on that one. Here we are. I'm going to feel around the big one here. That one's probably on the other side, let's see if I can find it. I'm going to try to use a little pick and I'm going to push it on the center right here. I'll show you where I'm pushing. Subaru was nice and they put it in the back where you can barely get to, but I'm going to just push right there and that unlocks this little clip right here.

We've got the door panel off. We've got it on a safe, secure area where it's not going to get scratched or scuffed, super important. We've got a couple of Phillips head screws, there's one right here, there's one right here. There's also a couple of little clips, so you're going to need a small pocket screwdriver. One of those clips is located right here and the other one's located, well it's kind of buried right behind here. This one's going to be the interesting one to get to, we're going to deal with that in a minute.

First we're going to take out these Phillips head screws and we'll move along. There's one, there's two. As you can tell, they're both the same. We'll set those aside. Time for our handy pocket screwdriver. I'm going to try for the hard one first, see if I can poke my head in here. I'll show you how these work in one second once I get it to break free. Come on baby. Almost. I'll just slide it out of here hopefully. It feels like this one might have clipped back in. That's okay, I love the struggle.

Here we go. When I was digging, I was coming along the plastic right up along here. There's a little push, I was pushing on that. Basically I slid it in and I pried a little bit, it pushed this in and that let it drop down and I did the same to this, let this side drop down. There we are. As you can tell, we have removed our window switch, we've got our mirror switch here and our locking mechanism.

We've got a couple of little locking tabs here. There's one right here, one right there, there, and there. We're going to use something as simple as a pocket screwdriver. I'm just going to stick it in between here and I'm going to try to pry, not too much because I don't want to break anything, but hopefully I can just pry this enough to be able to get these tabs in. If that doesn't work we can just try to push it, just like that. I'm going to do this one, just keep working back and forth. Sometimes it's hard to get it all out at the same time. While you're doing it you could try to push. I don't want to push too hard but I could try to push a little bit and see if that helps it along. Grab this one. Grab this one. Sorry if I'm turning it all around on you guys here. It will slide right out, just like that. Easy peasy.

We've got our little piece here. We've got our mirror switch. It just goes right through this hole, very simple. We're going to come through the back. We're going to make sure we're facing in the right direction and then we're just going to go ahead and press it in. Nice and easy, it's just plastic. That's it, easy peasy. Let's put this back in the door panel and we'll move along.

It's time to reinstall this into the door panel right here. I'm just going to come from the back side. I'm going to slide it through. There's going to be a screw hole here, screw hole there, it's going to line up with these. We've got our little clippy do's, they're going to go snap, snap. We'll come in from the back side, see if I can get it situated. It might be easier to look from the back side while I do it, but we'll just wing it. It feels good, nice and latched in. Before I screw it in let's just take a peek. Looks decent, it's all lined up right along here. If it isn't, just give it a little bonk like that, clips it in. That feels good.

Let's go ahead and mount it in now. We've got our two Phillips head screws, we're going to start them both in. We're not going to tighten either of them until they're both started. Still loose. I'm going to do this one. This one I'm going to go ahead and tighten right up. I'm just screwing into plastic so it doesn't need to be very tight. There we are. Make sure our bit doesn't stay in the screw. Now we're clear to put our door panel back on.

Here we go. We've got some electrical connectors here. We're going to go ahead and connect all these in and then we're going to move along. We're going to connect in that one down there and of course we're going to put it in our little cables, very important. You don't want to leave these off because, well good luck getting in. Here we go. We've got one big one, it's going to go right down here in the bottom. Click. We've got a couple of other ones here. Click. This one right here goes up higher. Click. Easy peasy. Cool. We'll do that electrical connector in one second down there, we'll just hang it so it's ready to go. I'm going to do these while I'm up here and then I'm just going to set the door panel inside it's little thing so I can get down under there.

We've got two cables. We've got our green cable. This one goes down to the handle so I'm going to go ahead and slide it in and then I'm going to lock it into this little doohickey. Boom. Right here, the top one, this is the lock cable, it just goes in, see if I can get it. Oops. You want to make sure the door is in the locked position here, makes it easier to get the cable in. There we are. I'm going to lock it in. There we are. Perfect.

I'm just going to take the door panel, I'm just going to set it up on here. Now I can let go for a second. We've got our cable right here, wiring harness. I'm just going to go into the little light, let me see if I can find it real quick. Yep. Okay. Right here, this is going to go right in. Let me see if I can find it again, I'll show you right where I am. The lock goes facing up, clicks in, easy peasy. Everything's in there. Cool. All right.

Before I go ahead and clip this in I'm just going to test it real quick. We're going to go ahead and unlock it. Now we're going to go ahead and lock it. That works perfect. Cool. Now we'll say that it's ... Let's see, I'm going to go in and actually because that's the door handle I'm going to be testing. I'll go in and then I'm going to try to open the door. Cool. Now I'm going to try it again, but I'm going to lock it. Unlock. Perfect.

All right. Let's get this door panel mounted in. Make sure it goes down, no binding. Goes back up. Love it. Door locks. Great. Oh, there we are. Works. Works. Here we go, we're going to test the mirror. Left side mirror, looks good. All right, now we can go ahead and put the door panel on. We'll make sure that the door panel is pulled down fully. We tested everything, we're good to go. We made sure we plugged in this light down here, definitely on, nice and bright. Somebody put in an LED, that's cool.

There's little holes inside the door panel or the door itself, that's where the pins from the door panel are going to sit into. You just take a peek and make sure you've got them looking like they're pretty lined up. Start at the top, work your way around. Just give it a little bonk. Bonk, bonk. That's my thing. There we are. Feels like maybe one more here. We've got three screws, one here, there and there, right? Theoretically we should have three screws left, and we do. We're going to go ahead and put these in. We're just going to start them in until we get all three started. Okay. One screw, two, three. Okay. I'm just going to use our screwdriver, we're going to turn them in to the right. Like I said, I'm not going to tighten it down yet until I get all three of them started in. It's very important in case you need to shift the door panel around at all, line up the holes. It's just going to help save you a little bit of time in the long run.

There we are. This was the last one so I'm just going to snug it right up. That feels good. This one feels good. Last one feels good. We'll close our little door here. Nice. We're going to put this on, that's this right here. It's got this right here. This goes down in there. Once it's in you just line everything up and give it a little squeeze.

All right, now if you wanted to you can go ahead and clean it down, get off any fingerprints you might have put on there, or leave them, whatever you did.

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